After Dark Read Free Page B

refill his water glass several times. He eats his final piece of toast.
     
    Y our house was way out in Hiyoshi, I seem to recall,” he says. His empty plates have been cleared away.
    Mari nods.
    “Then you’ll never make the last train. I suppose you can go home by taxi, but the next train’s not until tomorrow morning.”
    “I know that much,” Mari says.
    “Just checking,” he says.
    “I don’t know where you live, but haven’t you missed the last train, too?”
    “Not so far: I’m in Koenji. But I live alone, and we’re going to be practicing all night. Plus if I really have to get back, my buddy’s got a car.”
    He pats his instrument case like the head of a favorite dog.
    “The band practices in the basement of a building near here,” he says. “We can make all the noise we want and nobody complains. There’s hardly any heat, though, so it gets pretty cold this time of year. But they’re letting us use it for free, so we take what we can get.”
    Mari glances at the instrument case. “That a trombone?”
    “That’s right! How’d you know?”
    “Hell, I know what a trombone looks like.”
    “Well, sure, but there are tons of girls who don’t even know the instrument exists. Can’t blame ’em, though. Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton didn’t become rock stars playing the trombone. Ever see Jimi Hendrix or Pete Townshend smash a trombone onstage? Of course not. The only thing they smash is electric guitars. If they smashed a trombone, the audience’d laugh.”
    “So why did you choose the trombone?”
    He puts cream in his newly arrived coffee and takes a sip.
    “When I was in middle school, I happened to buy a jazz record called
Blues-ette
at a used record store. An old LP. I can’t remember why I bought it at the time. I had never heard any jazz before. But anyway, the first tune on side A was ‘Five Spot After Dark,’ and it was
great
. A guy named Curtis Fuller played the trombone on it. The first time I heard it, I felt the scales fall from my eyes. That’s
it
, I thought.
That’s
the instrument for me. The trombone and me: it was a meeting arranged by destiny.”
    The young man hums the first eight bars of “Five Spot After Dark.”
    “I know that,” says Mari.
    He looks baffled. “You do?”
    Mari hums the next eight bars.
    “How do you know that?” he asks.
    “Is it against the law for me to know it?”
    He sets his cup down and lightly shakes his head. “No, not at all. But, I don’t know, it’s incredible. For a girl nowadays to know ‘Five Spot After Dark’…Well, anyway, Curtis Fuller gave me goose bumps, and that got me started playing the trombone. I borrowed money from my parents, bought a used instrument, and joined the school band. Then in high school I started doing different stuff with bands. At first I was backing up a rock band, sort of like the old Tower of Power. Do you know Tower of Power?”
    Mari shakes her head.
    “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Anyhow, that’s what I used to do, but now I’m purely into plain, simple jazz. My university’s not much of a school, but we’ve got a pretty good band.”
    The waitress comes to refill his water glass, but he waves her off. He glances at his watch. “It’s time for me to get out of here.”
    Mari says nothing. Her face says,
Nobody’s stopping you.
    “Of course everybody comes late.”
    Mari offers no comment on that, either.
    “Hey, say hi from me to your sister, okay?”
    “You can do it yourself, can’t you? You know our phone number. How can I say hi from you? I don’t even know your name.”
    He thinks about that for a moment. “Suppose I call your house and Eri Asai answers, what am I supposed to talk about?”
    “Get her to help you plan a class reunion, maybe. You’ll think of something.”
    “I’m not much of a talker. Never have been.”
    “I’d say you’ve been talking a lot to me.”
    “With you, I can talk, somehow.”
    “With me, you can talk,
somehow
,” she